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June 2012

Monday, 25 June 2012

As I mentioned a few days ago, The Online Photographer (TOP) will be on hiatus till after the Fourth of July. Yr. Hmbl. Ed. has got to get a few projects done, and it's just not going to happen in the course of the normal daily workflow. I've even decided to stay off the Internet for the interval.

Stay off the Internet?! Can a person do that? I'm not sure if I can. We shall see.

If you are reading this, remember, you are a.) wonderful, b.) intelligent, c.) have good taste, and d.) are most likely good looking. If you are also e.) bored, don't forget that there have been 3,330 posts other than this one on TOP, and that the ones you don't see are accessible in the Archives. Plus another 1,349 at the original site (which still gets ~600 hits a day just from search engines). I don't even remember them all, so don't tell me you do. :-)

Sunday, 24 June 2012

I read a "middling" amount—about fifty or sixty books a year, which is more than most people but far less than really dedicated readers. Most of my reading is nonfiction (like this book, the read I've got going at the moment, which I'm liking a lot), but because I read so little fiction I make a concerted effort to every year read or reread at least one great classic—such as Richard Wright's Native Son or Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

A few words about the latter before I get on with it. I have the original three-volume set of Eugène Vinaver's editing of the Winchester manuscript, which he called The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. It retains the original antique spellings, which makes for a relatively impenetrable reading experience. That version is still available, but in a one-volume paperback as thick as a phone book. Unless you enjoy challenges or aren't a stranger to transitional Medieval English, I'd counsel you to avoid that edition. Fortunately, a modernized version based on the Winchester ms. is available from Oxford World Classics that's far easier to read. Edited by Helen Cooper, it's an intelligent abridgement and converts the text to modern punctuation and spellings (not easy—I tried it once). That one is the edition to read, no question. (Beware—the Kindle edition sold on the same page is not the right one. It's a different edition altogether, and editions are very important here.)

The stories of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table have of course been retold thousands of times, ranging from serious literary attempts at retelling like Scribners' classic The Boy's King Arthur by Sidney Lanier, with N.C. Wyeth's marvelous illustrations (currently available in a Dover reprint which I've not seen, allegedly with all the illustrations chunked together in the middle of the book), to the various Bowdlerizations from the regrettable Disney juggernaut. In between are literally thousands of cultural references in every conceivable medium, from song to stage play to political metaphor to cartoons, to outright satires such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which I successfully lobbied the professor of a class called "Epic and Romance" at Reed College to include in our syllabus; we went to the theater as a class. The professor liked it. Adults can't read the Lanier book, of course, because of its title. But the original, written by a 15th-century brigand from his prison cell, is an amazing book. Malory is one of the great storytellers in English.

As far as my classics program goes, I think I've mentioned before that a few years back I tried to read Moby Dick—and failed. Couldn't get through it. Augh. It worries my middlebrow mindset to find myself defeated by a book, especially one that's supposed to be good for you, but there it is.

So anyway, this year it was Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, a speedy and pleasurable read and a marvelously rich novel, whose only sin could be over-familiarity—not a problem for me, since I'd never read it before and didn't even know the story. (It's particuarly good with this book if you don't know the ending. If you don't, you're lucky—read the book quick before someone spoils it for you.) I find it astonishing that way back in 1847, no less, Charlotte Brontë managed to effectively set out most of the social and sexual (though not the political) program of feminism. The symbolism and psychology of the book is just superbly done. And it's fascinatingly written—it manages to read fluently and with forward propulsion despite extremely ornate and Latinate diction. I have a fairly large vocabulary, but no writer in my adult memory sent me to the dictionary as many times as Ms. Charlotte did. Even so, it's not a hard read, and goes along like a novel ought to—by keeping you avid to know what happens next.

On the (formerly silver) screenI've now also read a smattering of the (very large) body of Jane Eyre criticism and watched several of the more readily available movie or TV adaptations. And I plan to read a biography of Charlotte if I can identify a good one, all a means of better engaging with the book.

According to Rolling Stone reviewer Peter Travers, there have been 18 feature-film versions and nine made-for-TV ones. Someone (was it Schnabel?) once said Beethoven's piano sonatas are better music than can be played, and in the same way, I suspect Jane Eyre is a better book than can be filmed—every movie version necessarily has to fall short. My biggest frustration in watching the films is that, in this age of multi-part movies, this story particularly begs for a three-part treatment—the novel is simply too broad to be contained in the two hours of a theatrical release. The first film would cover Jane's early life up until she becomes a teacher at Lowood and abruptly gets it into her head to leave and seek her fortune in the broader world; the second, her time at Thornfield, which would end with her destitute and seemingly doomed on the moors; and the third comprising her sojourn with her cousins and of course the famously bittersweet denouement, and her acceptance of adult love under terms of full equality and mutual interdependence.

Secondly, filmmakers definitely need to read more of the feminist criticism of the book! They all miss the point of the woman in the attic, a crucial part of the symbolic richness of the story.

Third, the movie versions I've seen all seem to misread Jane's character to various degrees. Oddly, child-Jane is usually presented possessed of the requisite spunk and fire, but then adult-Jane is a bit too leached-out and pale-spirited. (This is especially true of the 1943 version, with Orson Welles as Rochester and a young Elizabeth Taylor in an uncredited role as Jane's friend Helen Burns, shot in appropriately noirish black-and-white. How did such a plucky, vivid child, well played by Peggy Ann Garner, grow up to be mild, insipid Joan Fontaine?) Brontë's point, to my reading, is that Jane is a woman who refuses to surrender her pride or honor either on account of her social class or her sex—she sees herself from first to last as deserving of respect and esteem as an individual. And, young and inexperienced though she might be, she expects and insists to be a man's equal as a thinking, feeling person. She's consistent in this—she demands her personhood from her elders, her teachers, her social betters, and her prospective lovers—even from her religious cousin, who wants her to subsume her identity and autonomy for a veritable mission from God. (She demurs, by accepting only on her own terms.) Granted, Brontë's method of granting Jane a family and a fortune is a bit Dickensian, with too much of the Deus ex machina about it, but hey, the author was a Victorian—we can't have everything on 20th-century terms.

Michael Fassbender is the "ugly" Mr. Rochester. Right.

Finally, I think it's hilarious that "Hollywood"—lumping all movie-makers together under that rubric—just can't seem to cast two physically unattractive people in a story about two physically unattractive people. The imperative of movie stars being good-looking is apparently just too strong a convention to gainsay, in most of the movie versions. (Although Charlotte Gainsbourg in the lifeless 1996 version is appropriately plain.) Kinda funny.

Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre, at a T-stop of 1.4 and in period lace.

I was seduced by Mia Wasikowska's Jane in Cary Fukunaga's 2011 feature film, and some people weren't. I understand that—director and actress underplay Jane's fire, her pride and independence despite her station, and the prickly wit and intemperate honesty that we know must have been part of what intrigued the worldly and supercilious Rochester.

Photographically—I should be scrupulous and say cinematographically—this most recent adaptation is so gorgeous it's almost distracting. As with Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, I could watch this movie just for the "pictures." Director Fukunaga in his commentary talks about scenes actually shot by candlelight (as in the screenshot above) and his pains to get the light of dawn just right, his torture of his focus-pullers and his use of 1.4 T-stops. The results are so frequently ravishing, even for a costume drama, that I sometimes found myself silently wishing for a little relief—even many of the momentary, throwaway images are arrestingly gorgeous. Fukunaga's and DP Adriano Goldman's subdued light and subtle colors echo the director's very uncharacteristic (for modern moviemakers) restraint—he paid for expensive horse-drawn coaches, for example, but shows them only briefly through a window at a distance, and he even greatly underplays the gothic horror aspects of the novel. The famous nocturnal laughter is barely hinted at, and Jane's direct encounters with the woman in the attic are left out. When Jane ventures out of her bedroom eventually to find the first fire, there is (allegedly) a woman standing in the window behind her:

Would you have seen that? I certainly didn't notice when I watched the movie. And I see everything.

The ending of this movie is almost cursory, and frankly inadequate. But then, it's one of the most brutal and enigmatic endings in literature—you really have to at least sense Brontë's deeper programmatic proto-feminist motives for the book's ending to be satisfying. Still, this 2011 release is the best of the movies I've watched or sampled, its only sin being that it's the latest in a long line of Eyre adaptations, likely none of which are perfect. But it's a much better movie than you might think, especially given its generous photographic and visual interest.

Jane in printDon't watch any of the movies, though, until after you've read the book. The book's the thing with Jane. It's richer than any film version will probably ever be, and not by a little bit. (Think that Beethoven quote again.)

For readers, there are two editions of Jane Eyre I'd recommend, neither one particularly prestigious or rare. For a good, well-crafted reader's copy with pleasing typography and a good introduction, the Everyman's Library hardback from Knopf is as workmanlike as bookmaking gets these days. And for a classic illustrated version, see if you can find the two-volume set (Jane Eyre and its sister Wuthering Heights) published by Viking in 1943. The Fritz Eichenberg illustrations make it well worth the trouble of seeking out these books. (Eichenberg's renditions of the novel's characters are the best-cast of all, you might say.) The set shouldn't be hard to find, although condition is always an issue. Check Abebooks.com too. They were published in a slipcase.

So next year it's Ulysses, and I'm already anxious. Dubliners is one of my favorite books, ever, but I tend to be put off by too much ambition in an artist. I don't know how I'll fare with that one.

At least I'm not aiming at Proust.

Mike

"Open Mike," a series of off-topic essays by Yr. Hmbl. Host, appears on Sundays.

P.S. Please, no spoilers in the Comments. I really am serious that for those people who don't already know the story but might want to read the book, it's better not to know the ending.

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by David Miller: "Among the greatest re-working of Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur is T.H.White's The Once and Future King. Don't blame White for the Disneyfication (committed in this case by DisneyCorp itself) to which the first book of the quartet, The Sword in the Stone, was subjected in the making of the animated children's film.

"White's work is wonderful on many levels for many ages. The Sword in the Stone is indeed charming and plays delightfully with notions of time and place and life in early-twentieth century England. By the time we reach book three, The Ill Made Knight, we're deep into the eternal challenges of love and loyalty, and in book four, The Candle in the Wind, we're tackling not only the death of Arthur but the precarious state of humanity on the brink of World War II.

"Eminently readable, it's a volume I return to every ten years or so. It's like revisiting a life-long friend and discovering that both of us have grown in wisdom and sorrow and hopefulness over the intervening decade. It's my desert island book. (And it's an easier read than Proust...which Cathryn has given me in preparation for retirement in a couple of years, when I'll have time for it.)

"I always enjoy your Sunday chats, Mike. Thanks."

Featured Comment by Max Buten: "To help you read Ulysses without getting bogged down, here are two recommendations: First, it is imperative to get the Gabler edition, which corrects 5000 mistakes in the original. Second, The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses by Harry Blamires is very helpful in explaining what's going on, what's real, what's metaphor, and other mysteries."

Saturday, 23 June 2012

From McDonald's Canada, a brief but entertaining glimpse into the specialist world of food photography and food styling.

By chance, a shoot for a burger ad is one of the few food photography shoots I've personally witnessed, and the video here understates the amount of styling that goes on by a considerable degree—although I'm sure it isn't deception, just narrative compression. You wouldn't want to sit through all the time this actually takes. At the shoot I saw, the stylist sat next to a giant stack of plastic trays full of buns, and as she patiently inspected one after another after another, she flipped the rejects briskly over her shoulder. Behind her was a small mountain of rejected buns. She must have gone through a thousand buns to find the four or five "stars" needed for the shoot.

That was B.P., of course—Before Photoshop. Maybe they don't need to go through nearly as many "prospects" now. James B, who sent us this link, said "depending on your point of view, this is either an informative look at how the advertising industry intelligently offers information on a product (in this case, the ingredients), or a cynical attempt to completely disguise the sad reality of a MacDonalds cheeseburger."

Reality on the left, advertising version on the right. The top half of the bun is actually displaced backwards in the advertising photo.Photo courtesy McDonald's Canada.

Plus, if you don't already know, you can find out from Hope Bagozzi how our Canadian friends say "out" and "about." :-)

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Ed Hawco: "The 'ad vs. reality' shot you show here is itself a bit of a deflection from reality. The 'real' burger on the left is not unappealing, all nicely lit and obviously handled with care, unlike the sad lumps you find at the bottom of a paper bag after you leave the drive-thru. A 'real' burger is usually slapped together carelessly, squished into a paper wrapper, and then mashed into a bag with a bunch of other stuff. By the time you unwrap it, it's twisted and limp, sweaty from condensation, and half the condiments have been squeezed out and smeared over the bun. If you want more realistic 'ad vs. reality' photos, check out this guy's website."

Featured Comment by John London: "In a previous life—or so it seems now—I was an industrial photographer working in the packaging industry, and my main task was photographing food for use on consumer packaging. For over 20 years we made food look good and edible, and most in a time before studio flash arrived in our studio. Shooting 10x8 trannies under tungsten in the early days and processed in our darkroom for speed was challenging. Make no mistake, food has to look good on the packaging, and our job was to help make the product sell. Along with stylists, marketing managers, brand managers, studios managers, product designers, advertising managers, graphic designers, etc. etc.—possibly a dozen or so people, all intent on putting their two-pennies' worth into the mix, was to choose the best, light it, photograph it, and present it in the manner desired and make it the most mouthwatering product you have ever seen.

"I remember one particular product shoot involved raspberries, which, in the U.K. at that time of year, were out of season. The remedy was to fly over from the Channel Islands pallets of the freshest fruit so we could choose the required number of delectable pieces. It took one and a half pallets before all the V.I.P.'s were satisfied with the desired samples. They then had to be set up, light, photographed, processed, evaluated and hopefully the photograph accepted before the fruit wilted in the cool room or we had to start again.

"Our fully equipped kitchen also was put to use on many occasions, especially on cake shoots. One chocolate line took three days, and over 60 cakes were cooked and rejected before we had the right one...have you ever cut a sponge or a cake and found objectionable air bubbles in the wrong place or maybe the chocolate topping of an uneven thickness or a caramel which colours on an incorrect line?

"All this is to point out that food photography is not a con, it's a craft. It takes an awful lot of hard work and integrity to make a product look its best. I am not advocating misdirection or fraud, but would you really want to see a favourite food look average, uninteresting, and non-appetising? I doubt it."

Friday, 22 June 2012

I've been following with considerable interest the whole Emily White furor. The nutshell version: an NPR intern named Emily White admitted that she has more than 11,000 songs on her iPod but has only ever paid for 15 CDs. This triggered an upswell in the ongoing debate about file sharing, piracy, ethics, and practical issues pertaining thereunto, most notably an impassioned criticism from David Lowery, the frontman of two rather obscure bands called Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker.

Many different people and sites have weighed in on the matter. The most interesting take I've found yet is from Jay Frank at billboard.biz, who argues that people aren't stealing David Lowery's music because they've never heard of Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker (I happen to have one CD of each, both legitimately purchased), and most people don't steal music if they're curious about it, they just stream it and move on because they don't want it cluttering up their hard drives. He thinks that the decline in revenue experienced by musicians is due to greatly increased competition and a diluted market, and that fame and name recognition makes more of a difference to musicians' bottom lines than questions of who pays how much for what. He makes a reasonable case. But then, so do Lowery and, for that matter, White. And so do many of the thousands of people who have commented on this issue at dozens of sites.

It's the carrier you can charge forBe that as it may, the "meta" issue that's roiling the waters in the arts business (which were never placid to begin with—let's get out in front of that) is that the way producers control the trade in creative content is to control the carrier medium. That is, you don't buy music, you buy an LP, or a CD, or a cassette tape; you don't buy the words of a novel, you buy the bound stack of paper they're printed on. You don't buy the news, you buy some folded-up sheets of newsprint. And every upset in the way the content is carried creates shifts and changes in someone's business model. Lately, of course, digital dissemination has been raising particular havoc with all sorts of formerly reasonably settled business models. Newspapers and magazines are suffering; music labels are howling that piracy is their ruin (never mind that a case could be made that music labels historically pirated the work of musicians in the first place); and Amazon with its Kindle, and more broadly the whole concept of the electronic book, are like a vast black stormcloud on the horizon of the book publishing business.

The implications of all of this would take an essay of book length even to outline. Not to mention that everybody's got an opinion about every little facet of it, which could consume further infinities of verbiage. Each form of content is different, and the changes in each are different, and the implications of all those changes are all different. The situation is...complicated.

But the main thing, to me, is that it's usually the carrier, and how it can be monetized, and how the proceeds are divided, that matters; and, in my view, the particular circumstances of the carrier in each case is essentially arbitrary, almost random, depending on some transitory state of technology and on the greater or lesser effectiveness of the business model, the rules (laws, customs, and contracts) that are in place, and the state of competition.

I personally have a curious relationship to these issues, as I used to work in magazines and now deliver content to an audience without needing to pay overhead. But on the other hand, the most effective way to monetize this site has been by selling prints, which are not images but pieces of paper...carriers for an image and a signature. So I can sort of see both sides of these issues.

Imagine (not the Lennon song)I just wonder what photography might be like if, by some happenstance, the carrier medium for a photographic picture were less like what it is, and more like, say, a 45 rpm single record in 1966. I can't imagine by what means it would happen, but imagine if, every time someone viewed a picture taken by you, you were to receive a dollar, or a cent, or even 1/100th of a cent. Or imagine if a "like" on a social media site was worth a nickel.

Most photographers wouldn't become rich overnight—I wouldn't—but billions of dollars would begin funnelling toward the producers of photography that aren't being funnelled in that direction now. The transformation that such a state of affairs would visit upon photographers, and photography as a whole, would be marvelous to contemplate, a long domino effect of resounding implications.

And why isn't that the way it is? Well, it just isn't, that's all. When I was a boy an LP cost $3.99, and it was pretty much the only way I had to hear music of my choice when I chose to. Those who produced and sold the carrier—the 7" or 12" disk of vinyl in a cardboard sleeve—controlled the market, and commanded my dollars. They don't any more. Now you can sample every track for free and buy just the tracks you choose and choose not to pay if you like. Why the difference? Just because that's the way it is now. It was one way back then and now it's changed. There's no justice in any of it, necessarily, only circumstance. In 1880, songwriters died paupers; in 1980, they made vast fortunes; in 2080, who knows? For a time, certain parties benefit more; later, other parties do. In one period, everyone makes money; in another, no one does. It all seems very arbitrary to me, a complex shifting mass of competing desires and rules and technological effects and social customs.

I don't have a conclusion here. This whole complex of issues is far too vast, as I say, to even delineate in a short blog post of a few hundred words. It's interesting to think about, though. It's possible that Jay Frank's outlier conclusion might be right. In a world of intense competition and a surfeit of product, "the game is about exposure and awareness...It's not about royalty rates, thievery, or even quality of music. It's all about how [we] get people to know [we] exist."

In the meantime, I have 12,145 piece of music in my computer library, several thousand CDs (many in boxes in the attic), and several hundred LPs. And I paid for almost all of them. Maybe a few handfuls of things here and there I got for free, but they're very much the exception. In some cases I've paid two, three, or even four times for the same piece of music. I pay a fair amount to own photographs, too: I buy books. It's not enough to make photographers rich, for the most part, but at least it's something.

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Rob L: "And then there's the example, in extreme edge case form, of Amanda Palmer and her amazing Kickstarter campaign. Very much in line with the 100 or 1000 loyal fans concept discussed here a while back, or several other projects. Perhaps we're seeing a return in some small measure to the era of patronage, where instead of paying à la carte you support the artists you favor."

Featured Comment by almostinfamous: "Well written, Mike. I like this take on the whole brouhaha as well."

Featured Comment by Sarge: "What creates value?

"Conventional business models can be relied to work and endure in markets for tangible goods and services where sellers also tend to dominate. The fewer sellers there are in an industry, the more dominant they become. They can create demand, limit supply, set prices (that they charge consumers or pay producers).

'Also, tangible goods are consumed exclusively. What I eat is no longer available to anybody else. What I own I have exclusive title to. Tangible goods (and services) have both intrinsic value (to the buyers) and scarcity value (to everyone else) which is why consumers are willing to pay for them.

"On the other hand, digital products tend to be virtual 'free goods' with unlimited copies. Downloading a music file doesn't diminish the supply available to others. There is no exclusivity. Why pay good money for something that is accessible to everyone else?

"Non-exclusivity begets market failure. Which is why Steve Jobs' iTunes business model, charging a dollar per download for music regardless of its intrinsic value, works.

"As for TOP's 'business model' enduring in 'the game of exposure and awareness' (Jay Frank) 'in a world of intense competition and a surfeit of [blogs],' its 'intrinsic value to its readers' will have everything to do with it. Some 35,000 folks will be reminded next week what its intrinsic worth is to them."

Featured Comment by Peter Klein: "The Internet has made it possible for the public to steal in such volume and with such efficiency that the concept of intellectual property has become almost meaningless. Yet if your work isn't on the Internet, nobody will know it exists.

"I wonder if we'd have The Catcher in the Rye if J.D. Salinger was forced to give the book away on the 'Net to gain exposure. Or sell to his publisher 'all rights to the work and all its parts, in all forms, original or derived, in all media, now existing or created in the future.' Maybe he could make a living on the sale of Holden Caulfield coffee mugs and T-shirts. If the publisher's lawyers didn't lock those up, too.

"Who decided that Internet entepreneurs are Masters of the Universe, and artists, writers, composers and photographers are mere 'content providers?' Don't get me started...."

Mike replies:Your comment 'yet if your work isn't on the Internet, nobody will know it exists' reminds me of an urban planning paradox that emerged a handful of decades ago. Town centers were getting congested and were built up, so when it came time to put in the expressways, they were routed around the edge of many towns. Whoops! What happened was that businesses sprouted up around the bypasses and the old business districts withered. I used to live in a town in Illinois that was a textbook example of this. The historic town square was so pretty it had been used for movies (Groundhog Day was filmed there), but the County had outgrown the courthouse and it took drivers too long to get through town. So the main road was routed in a semicircle around the edge of town and the courthouse was relocated on it. When I was there, not only were many businesses failing in the old town square while the wraparound road had become a stripmall hell, but when I made comments about how pretty the town was, I'd get blank stares from people from Chicago—all they knew of the town was the wraparound road with the strip malls; they'd never seen to the old town center. So to them, the town was an ugly little blight on the landscape with no charm or distinction.

So it is with the Internet. It's where the people are now—it's where everybody hangs out. It's the main road skirting the old town center. It's not that the old models are being attacked or aren't being sufficiently valued, it's just that they're withering from lack of attention...the traffic has been diverted, so to speak.

Featured Comment by David Comdico: "Thanks for link to the Lowery article. I found it a good corrective to the billboard.biz article which I read first and loathed. I was, however, very sad to read about the suicides of Vic Chestnut and Mark Linkous. I have a couple of Sparklehorse CDs on my rack and they have enriched my life much more than the 15 bucks I paid for them. I can think of numerous items I've purchased since for an equivalent amount that are in a landfill someplace, enriching nothing, not even the soil. Surely, the Jay Franks of the world can provide us nothing more than a Panglossian rationalization for our guilty conscience. The brutal logic of unstoppable technological advancement and displacement is the 21st Century's version of Manifest Destiny."

Thursday, 21 June 2012

Which accounts for why I've been wandering around the house today muttering, "I already have enough lenses...I already have enough lenses...."

Also, Roger C. at LensRentals has already checked his first dozen samples and has a review up. Among other interesting comments, Roger says, "I'm extremely impressed. I'd be impressed if a lens this size and price was just decent, but this one is excellent."

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Ben: "I just picked mine up today and it's pretty amazing. I haven't spent much time with the images yet but so far it's like a super-quiet, super-smooth, rather large lens cap. Perfect for carrying around!"

A man reads a newspaper on New York's 6th Ave. and 40th St., with the headline: "Nazi Army Now 75 Miles From Paris," on May 18, 1940.(AP Photo/Courtesy NYC Municipal Archives)

The estimable Alan Taylor at The Atlantic's InFocus has curated another small selection from the 870,000 images from New York City's Municipal Archive, including several previously unseen shots by Eugene de Salinac. Note #26, which is creepy yet has a curious bit of photo-tech interest, too.

Speaking of old news photos, there's a seller on eBay who is dispersing some newspaper archives. On a whim I just bought this one, a photo from 1957 called "Car in which Salvatore Moretti, Chicago policeman, was found slain near Joliet." I had no press photos in my collection.

The company claims to be putting up 15,000 old press images a week for auction, which is a little horrifying in its implications (sign of the times). But whatever.

(The JPEG has the seller's watermarks on it, obviously.)

Mike

UPDATE: Turns out there's a known story behind my random eBay find. Sal Moretti was an ex-policeman turned hitman who bungled a mob hit—he carelessly left valuables and papers on his victim's corpse, including a receipt that tied a mob boss to the killing. When his body was found in the trunk of this car, all of his possessions except his comb had been taken, his pockets had been turned inside out, and even the labels of his clothes were cut out. This was apparently a message to other mob hitmen: be more careful about what you leave behind. Moretti's murder allegedly made other hitmen so nervous that several subsequent victims of mob murders were found with all their clothing removed.

The car in the picture, which had been stolen, was found in Joliet presumably because at the time of Moretti's murder his brother was serving time in prison there.

The full story (much, much fuller) is here. Thanks to Andy Kowalczyk for the link.

The man in the picture is a Joliet Sheriff named Roy Doerfaer or Doerfler.

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Andrew: "It's amazing how many images have been put up for sale on the Internet. Some images are available as a single print, other images have multiple prints available—although the sellers generally don't tell you how many copies they have. I've bought a few, and I've seen a couple re-listed again—in each case they are all original prints, on single weight fibre based paper, usually with a Roneo'd (copied) description of the photo stuck to the back. For the price they are a great way to collect original, interesting photographs, and at the same time preserve some history...."

I've enjoyed "demystifying" various aspects of photography—Oren Grad's nice word for it—and I've gone through various "phases," or fads, or preoccupations, or obsessions through the years. The most obvious one, and one most people arrive at early in their involvement with their own photography, is with sharpness. That didn't last all that long for me. Sharpness (slash, resolution) doesn't interest me much; in my opinion it ruins as many photographs as it makes.

Of all those faddish phases, though, the one that lasted the longest and was the most (maddeningly) persistent for me was with bokeh. All hope abandon, ye who enter there.

And yet, people might be amused to learn that I shoot with Micro 4/3 mainly because I think it's just about perfect for depth of field. That is, it gives the best balance of large-sensor advantages and smaller-sensor d.o.f characteristics. It's just really a luxury to be able to get such good d.o.f. with relatively wide apertures.

And I hardly ever shoot with any lenses wide open. (And with some lenses, never.) It's just too easy for me to see the aberrations that are always most evident at the widest apertures.

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Wednesday, 20 June 2012

I should have added, to John Kennerdell's article "In Defense of Depth" yesterday, a reminder that John was the author of the article I published in Photo Techniques in 1997 that introduced the term "bokeh" and the concept behind it to photographers in the West.

I added two other articles to John's—one by Oren Grad on the terminology of bokeh in Japan, and the one that really allowed the trio of articles to be published in Photo Techniques at all, Harold Merklinger's fine investigation of the technical underpinnings of the appearance of out-of-d.o.f. blur. (Photo Techniques, as its name implied, was a technical magazine, and didn't publish a lot of articles about pure aesthetic considerations without also covering the technical side.) But despite the fact that all three articles appeared together, John's was the first and really the central one, and the one that kicked things off.

Please forgive me for assuming that was common knowledge. If I had thought about it for half a second I would have realized it is not.

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No two pieces of the same photographic equipment behave the same way. Lenses, camera bodies, memory cards, computers, printers, they all vary from unit to unit.

Some of the ways they vary are unimportant to us. Generally we don't care if the clock speed of our computer or the read/write speed of our flash RAM card is some percent higher or lower than someone else's. Sometimes it can be very important; as Lloyd Chambers has written about at length, focus accuracy in cameras is problematical at best and can vary considerably from unit to unit. Sometimes it only matters to a subset of users; most of us don't care that different units of the same camera model will have slightly different low-light noise characteristics, but if you're an available-darkness photographer who's always living on the Stygian ragged edge, that's another matter.

The problem is, any review you read is about one particular unit. You, and the reviewer, hope it's a typical unit. With time and experience, reviewers develop instincts for when something is horribly wrong; normally, though, it's impossible for us to tell if a unit is merely better or worse than average. Obviously one can't learn anything about product variability from testing one unit, which is all there is usually the time or money to do. Unfortunately, the peculiar statistics of small numbers mean that you have to test many units or you will frequently be wrong.

Let me give you a numerical example. Suppose a company introduces a new piece of photographic equipment that is so poorly made that 20% of them perform horribly. I'd certainly not want to be recommending that to my readers. How many units would I have to test to discover that? If I tested 10, there would still be a 10% chance of me not getting a single lousy unit. If I reviewed two dozen products a year and I tested 10 of everything I reviewed, two or three times a year I'd be assuring my readers that some product was well made when it wasn't.

This would not endear me to my readers or my editors, with good reason.

Not that it's feasible for reviewers to test even ten units. We just can't collect enough information on product variability to provide reliable advice. We don't even try; if we did, readers would be thoroughly ticked at having to wait an extra six months for their reviews.

There are rare exceptions. Back in the early 1980s, when I was writing for Darkroom Photography magazine, the editor Ken Werner and I were very interested in knowing what the absolute best enlarging lenses were. (The results of this investigation are in my free downloadable book, Post Exposure.) There were lots of old shutterbugs' tales out there, but precious little hard information. The magazine paid me a then-considerable sum to test every single one of the top-tier enlarging lenses made, up to and including the fabled apo El-Nikkor (the only true apochromatic enlarging lens*). I think there were 60 or 70 lenses involved in all formats from 35mm through 4x5.

I wasn't too far into my testing before I got to the Schneider Componon 50mm ƒ/2.8, a lens that was widely regarded as excellent. Well, my sample wasn't. It was so badly decentered that there was smearing of the image on-axis! At the edges of the field, around the circumference, resolution varied by considerably more than a factor of two.

Ken contacted the people at Schneider, who were appropriately appalled. A second sample of that lens behaved normally. That got me looking at quality control. I tested all the lenses for decentering. In many cases, I had the manufacturer sent a second sample; there was a lot of random sample variation. When all was said and done, I'd looked at well over 100 lenses, and maybe five were "perfectly" centered. The rest all showed a visible degree of deviation from the ideal. Nearly a third were sufficiently decentered that I wouldn't consider them acceptable.

That's when I started firmly recommending that people should never buy a lens without return privileges, and that they test it thoroughly as soon as they got it. And we're talking about enlarging lenses here, the mechanically simplest of optics. If so many of them are bad, imagine what can happen with regular camera lenses.

That's in the past. Now we come to the present. We all know that computer printers and displays vary in their color rendition from unit to unit. That's why color management and custom profiles are an essential part of any serious worker's toolkit. It's a kind of product variability that we accept as common, and that we can fix with the proper software. What, though, about the variations that we can't fix? Specifically, do two different units of the same model printer produce equally "fine-grained" prints (i.e., with uniform ink droplet patterns)? If not, are the differences between units large enough to matter?

Recently I had the reason and the opportunity to investigate that question in Epson 3880 printers, and got some surprising results. Tune in in two weeks for the full story (as TOP will be closed for maintenance next week).

Ctein

[*I believe the Carl Zeiss S-Orthoplanar was also a true apochromat, although it was never readily available. —Ed.]

Ctein's weekly column on TOP appears on Wednesdays, with only occasional sample variation.

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Featured Comment by John Wilson: "Roger Cicala of Lens Rentals has done some interesting investigations on variability in camera equipment. He has the great advantage of having access to reasonable numbers of the same item (because he stocks them for rental) and has access to good measuring equipment. His first blog post on it is here. If you don't already read his blog I'd warmly recommend it."

Featured Comment by Allan Ostling: "Your Darkroom Photography test was a classic in its day. I pored over that article, then bought the Computar 65mm, one of the enlarging lenses to which you gave the top rating. I lost all respect for Schneider lenses, and this was reinforced when I got a de-centered Schneider zoom on a Samsung film P&S in 1996. I had a stack of those magazines from Issue #1. In 1990 I donated them to the library at the Center for Creative Photography, on the U of A campus in Tucson."

Featured Comment by James B: "There's also another variable for most modern equipment: local climatic conditions. Not extreme, but average climate from winter to summer. The manufacturers of consumer equipment all have a little paragraph tucked away somewhere in the user instructions advising of temperature limits (and it is normally pretty broad) of something like –20 to +50 Celsius (sorry my American friends, I only understand decimal). I've tested for military-grade use various thermal imaging units. These things are literally hand assembled and all are individually tested at the factory before being passed for service.

"Most are useless in a Norwegian winter or a Arabian summer. OK, those are the two extremes we test against. Most are still exhibiting significant variations in a European winter or summer. Some can exhibit variations on an April day in the U.K. in between pre-dawn and early afternoon, with a temperature difference of only about 15 degrees Celsius. Tiny variations in plastics quality and metal/plastic surfaces can twist the optics by that tiny amount as temperature changes. The principle applies just as much to commercial camera lenses as it does to military thermal imagers.

"Don't start me on humidity—that's an even worse variable.

"And worst of all is shock. You can mount an optic and calibrate it perfectly, but a big jolt and it's knocked off-axis. You can try to get it back in calibration, but what's actually the issue is that one of the 10 or so internal lenses has changed alignment, so it's a back to the factory job.

"I only have consumer lenses, less my completely beloved Nikkor 105mm ƒ/2 Defocus Control which I assume sits somewhere between consumer and pro. There's just too many variables for me to think of wasting my money on a pro lens, when I know that despite everything, so much depends on factors beyond my control."

Tuesday, 19 June 2012

If there's a single received idea that fires up the imagination of my young photographer friends these days, it's that for "professional looking" photographs they should buy fast lenses and then use them at their widest apertures. I've begun hearing them criticize slower lenses and smaller sensors for their lack of "depth of field control." That term once meant something more subtle—we'll come to that in a moment—but now it seems to have become merely shorthand for "Right, let's see how shallow this thing can focus." It's all about blur, baby, blur.

Consider the irony here. For most its history, among the greatest technical challenges of photography was obtaining even adequate depth of field. From extreme lens movements to big lights, tiny apertures, long exposures, and multiple flash pops, photographers bent over backwards simply to get enough of their subject into focus. So why aren't more of us welcoming the ease with which we can do it today?

One answer might be that most enthusiasts coming into photography since the start of the digital era did so via small-sensor cameras. To them, larger sensors with their greater focal lengths produce the exotic shallow-focus look they associate with "serious" photography. The problem begins when razor-thin focus becomes a gimmick or a crutch, a cliché, a contrivance, a visual tic, a distracting and annoying...sorry, I've been looking at way too much student work this week.

Don't get me wrong. Selective focus has always been among photography's most valuable techniques. Even apart from its usefulness in isolating subjects, there is a beauty to the plane of focus that belongs to photography alone, and many of us have gone through a fascination with it.

But if the current hobbyist obsession seems to regard minimal depth of field as a hallmark of a memorable image, some of us relics from the film age might argue pretty much the opposite. The richest photos—the ones we return to again and again, seeing more each time—most often work in layers. They show more rather than less, taking in the full spatial depth of our world rather than just one razor-thin slice of it.

Reality checkOpen almost any book of photos by the real masters and mainly you'll see the use of mid to small apertures and ample depth of field. By way of semi-random example here are the first six names I see on the bookshelf next to me: Brassaï, Werner Bischof, Eugene Atget, Joel Meyerowitz, Ryuji Miyamoto, and William Allard. A diverse list, to be sure, but think about it: if they share one skill, it's a keen sense of composition in all three dimensions.

We could name any number of famous examples, but one that has been particularly well documented is Sam Abell’s remarkable photo of a cattle branding. As Alex Webb reportedly said of this image, "This is what we’re all trying to do." And just what's that? In this short video on the making of the photo, Sam describes it as "to create a layered, deep, complex, complicated photograph that doesn't look complex or complicated." That's not a requirement for a great photo, of course, but it does represent a kind of gold standard for many of the very best photographers throughout the history of the medium. And, pretty obviously, it’s usually not achieved with a lens anywhere near wide open.

Portraits, someone says? Take another look at the enduring ones. A few off the top of my head: Sander's pastry chef*, Penn's Cocteau, Karsh's Audrey Hepburn, Avedon's Ezra Pound, Steve McCurry's Afghan Girl, and Steve Jobs by Albert Watson. You'll see less shallow focus than subtle control of focus. Everything that the eye wants to be sharp, is. Everything else tends to be less so, but in a way that looks effortless and natural, never calling attention to itself. (In fact I'd hold that no aspect of good technique ever does, but then maybe I'm a relic that way too.)

The decisive millimeterNow there is one problem, or let's call it a challenge, when you no longer have masses of blur to hide behind. The deeper the focus, the greater the compositional demands. Not only do you have to press the button at exactly the right moment, but your camera needs to be in exactly the right place when you do. Arranging all those in-focus elements into coherent form makes for a real-time, four-dimensional exercise in which millimeters (or at least inches) can make all the difference between no shot, good shot, and great shot. But that's another topic in itself.

Meanwhile, I don't want to step on any toes. If your idea of photographic fun is ultra-fast lenses and gnat's eyelashes of sharpness against fields of gloriously abstract blur, go for it. As millions have evidently discovered in the past few years alone, it's an easy way to make images that can be very pleasing in their own fashion. Just don't be surprised if some day you look back on all that shallow-focus work and find yourself wishing you'd paid more attention to the third dimension. And don't ask me whose old photos I was looking at when I first began to realize that for myself.

JK

*OK, this one has less depth of field than I recalled. But then he was working with a very big plate and a very long lens. And note the care he's taken despite that to keep every bit of the chef and his mixing bowl in focus—now that's "DOF control."

John Kennerdell, an American who has lived and worked in Southeast Asia for most of his adult life, writes several posts a year for TOP. His website is Indochina Photoelectric. More of his writings for us can be found through the Categories list in the right-hand sidebar.

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Featured [partial] Comment by Elisabeth: "I'm a daily reader of TOP and this has to be one of my favorite articles from the last several months. I like a good super-shallow DOF image as much as anyone, but the experience for me often feels like tasting a piece of candy—a sense of instant gratification that lasts only as long as I'm looking at the photo. I never feel a desire to go back and look at such photos again and again, nor do I learn much from them. They are often beautiful to look at, but rarely reveal anything beyond the first (often only) layer. A lasting image for me is one that has those many layers of content that Sam Abell referred to, and I'm most impressed by photographers who manage to use all three dimensions well, placing multiple elements perfectly within the frame and using the entire 2D space so well that the image feels larger and more content-rich than it would seem it has a right to. I am particularly in awe of street photographers who regularly compose such images on the fly—masterfully choosing the precise moment to capture chaotic, moving elements both near and far and at all points within the frame (even the corners and edges) in such a way that everything seems perfectly placed in the telling of a larger story." [For the rest of Elisabeth's comment, please see the Comments section. —Ed.]

Featured [partial] Comment by Brad Nichol: Aside from the obvious artistic deficits of this fast-glass, razor-thin-d.o.f. obsession—and it is an obsession among many of the students in my classes—there are some real and overlooked technical issues that most don't factor in.

"Most of these slavish advocates spend their time looking at on-screen web images to make judgments. A massive proportion of the images that look suitably sharp as 600px pics on screen look dismally soft when translated to an actual print of any size. These folk are often very disappointed when they try to make actual prints for the wall, blaming their lenses, cameras etc.

"The d.o.f. is so shallow that there is no 'sneeze room' whatsoever. Most cameras' focusing systems are not good enough to reliably nail the shot each time, leading photographers down the path of shooting copious frames in the hope of getting one good one. The great majority of this fast glass is seriously compromised wide open and adds all sorts of nasty aberrations that usually don't help the look of the image in any way. Despite the accepted wisdom, the bokeh produced by many lenses wide open is often far less pleasing than it is one or one-and-a-half stops down."

Mike replies:It's an important, and overlooked, issue. Most lenses, especially fast lenses, just don't perform well wide open. This can be a good look occasionally, but in large part that "slice of sharpness" is, as you say, going to disappoint in terms of just how sharp it is. Or rather isn't.

Featured Comment by Arg: "I think high depth of field became unfashionable when it became the province of cheap cameras. Once shallow depth of field became the exclusive domain of more expensive gear, its stardom was assured."

Featured Comment by Jim Richardson: "A few years ago a stock photo editor I knew was sending out emails to his photographers touting the latest photographic trend that was storming the bastions of conventionality and bringing riches to those smart enough to embrace the new vision. The new technique: magenta skies at sunset, achieved by using an FL-D filter. 'Anyone who isn't producing magenta sunsets will be left out in the stock photo world,' he proclaimed. A year later nothing could else could reliably bring on gagging and vomiting as magenta sunsets.

This was sent in by dwig, who notes that replacing "chemistry" with "software" is all that's needed to bring the quote up to date:

"But with the practice of photography came the sad knowledge that there is no royal road to the taking of good pictures. Although money might be lavishly spent in the purchase of costly apparatus, yet it was soon found that some knowledge of chemistry, and some artistic taste, together with practice in manipulation, and neatness and accuracy in working, were indispensable to success."

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Monday, 18 June 2012

(By "box," I mean camera. The appellation doesn't work so well any more. Used to be, a camera was a "light-tight box." It was essentially an empty area between a lens and a piece of film, the primary duty of which was to keep light out. Now, of course, cameras are much more than boxes. But I still sometimes still call them that. Habit, I guess.)

A friend recently sent me a portrait of himself made with a Holga. A famous photographer had been assigned to make his portrait. At the end of the session, the famous photographer pulled out a Holga—a plastic camera that costs $29.99—and made a few exposures.

The Holga photograph* was beautiful. Exceptionally nice.

"A friggin' Holga," my friend said.

But, really, the only requirement of the box is that you like what it gives you. That's really all. If you don't like the pictures you won't like the camera. But if you dig the pictures, that's enough.

Making good pictures with "bad" cameras has always been a minor strain within photography, a hobby within the hobby. Masterpieces have been made with Holgas. There's a whole little Universe called "Lomography," which I'm only vaguely familiar with. Serious art projects have been done with toy cameras. There's a "community" for that, no doubt.

In art school I did a project with a Kodak Instamatic. The Instamatic sort of out-Holga'd the Holga (or its then-current equivalent, the Diana). It had a smaller negative and an even worse lens (the standard enlargements were very small, and lens flare is one form of contrast control). I used color neg film because that's all they made for it (it took drop-in cartridges, originally one of the Instamatic's innovations), then made black-and-white prints from the color negs. My project was called "the Great Pigeon Safari" and the requirement of the pictures was that they had to have a pigeon included. (Of course, being me, I couldn't limit myself to even that one basic condition.) All very tongue-in-cheek. Oddly enough, though, a number of the pictures were quite appealing. And it really did occur to me at the time that I could make that my "gimmick" and work that way permanently.

I didn't pursue it, though. As I later discovered, the reason for that was because I don't pursue anything—too many other things to try, and I'm too weak in the face of temptation—but even at the time there was a good reason: getting the color neg film developed was too expensive! It was cheaper to roll my own 35mm B&W film and develop it myself.

The takeaway: as long as you like what your camera is giving you, that's really all that matters. Beyond that, you really don't get much if any extra credit for anything.

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Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: If you are going to speak of toy cameras you should read this interview with Nancy Rexroth. Nancy sort of owns that territory and has some interesting things to say about its current residents. It's interesting how much effort she made to maintain control of the process, where the Lomography people try to abdicate control to the camera just as much as high end point and shoot users.

"Aside from all that, the recurring urge to duct tape a photocopier lens to a cardboard box and take pictures with it is what keeps me paying for keeping all my darkroom equipment in storage. Holgas and Dianas always seemed way too expensive compared to thrift store Bakelite 120 cameras, especially since the former were about as rugged as a bowl of goldfish.

"The ability to reduce the Sony NEX to the equivalent of the back half of a box is what I love about it. By the way, old slide viewing loupes make excellent substitute Holga and Diana optics for use on a digital camera if you are into that sort of thing."

Something that occurred to me as I've read up on street photography over the past few days: it sure is a hard way to make a living.

If photography is like writing—a few people make it pay, others just love doing it—then street photography is more like poetry. You'd better enjoy doing it and get personal satisfaction from the results, because it's never going to make you rich or famous.

At least if you make Photoshopped portraits, gauzy idealized landscapes, or do weddings, there are people who will pay for that. Street photos? Not so much.

Photography in general is like the rocks on the lee shore: it takes the ambitious, munches them up, and sends them to the bottom. The only difference is that, even in the days of sail, the perilous shoals didn't claim so many victims. Most ambitious photographers I know work hard at it for a few years, then assess their success along with their conspicuous lack of recognition and wealth, and move on to making a living at something more sensible.

That's why I typically recommend that people keep their day jobs and remain amateurs at photography. Photography is a superb hobby, one of the best. It's when you try to make a living at it that it is so likely to resist you.

I don't think other hobbies have this problem. I mean, consider, say, fly-fishing, or building plastic model planes. Very few people who do those things—or most other hobbies—assume they're going to "go pro" someday. Very few people try. It doesn't generally come up.

"Wow, that's a really amazing Revell-Monogram Bf 110G-2 you've built." "Yes, thanks, actually I've been thinking about turning pro." "You've backpacked to the top of Mount Hood six times? You should try making a living at that."

There sure are some great street photographers out there—more than I'd realized. Street photography isn't easy. It takes a particular knack, as well as time and devotion. To say I'm impressed is a big understatement. There's lots of talent out there.

But if you want to be famous, or if you plan to make a living...well, try poetry. It should be easier.

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Featured Comment by Stan B.: "Although street photography has been enjoying somewhat of a revival of late (mostly online), not only will you not make money at it—you generally won't get much recognition from the art market. Galleries usually look down on the stuff—it's been done; too yesterday; the 'seventies revival' is over. It's kinda like what I imagine the world is like for jazz aficianados."

Featured Comment by Dave: "You think it's tough to be a street photographer alone, try doing that and poetry! I've learned to love ramen!"

Featured Comment by Miserere: "When people (friends, friends-of-friends, family...) see my photos they often say 'these are great! You should go professional!' To which I reply. 'you're right, I'm going professional this very moment; please pay me $500 for this print you liked so much.'

"I always get a blank stare.

"I then proceed to explain that to be a professional street photographer I would need to sell 8 prints for $500 each month in order to make a living in my area of the country. They don't realise that 'being a pro' means other people, just like them, need to cough up money to sustain me in my 'proness.' My little act really brings it home to them.

"I think I've played this out on most of my family and friends by now so they know not to tell me I should go pro anymore when they see some new photos they like. I really appreciate it too as it had long since stopped sounding like a compliment."

Featured Comment by Maggie Osterberg: "Once again, I'm reminded how much being a photographer is like being a musician or songwriter. (Two things that have a lot of overlap, I've noticed—many musicians are passionate photographers and vice versa.) So much that this quote from Robert Fripp could apply to your post:

The business of the amateur musician is music. The business of the professional musician is business.

"When I was in my 20s, I raced bicycles. When I needed more cash to keep up my gear, I took a job wrenching at a bike shop and after a year of working on other people's bikes, I never wanted to wrench on another bike again.

"The best way to ruin a perfectly good hobby? Have someone pay you to do it.

"Unless they're paying you to do your own thing and only your own thing, in that case, you're one of the lucky ones. You're HCB or Bono or Thom Yorke or Irving Penn. Or maybe you teach and make art photos, like Minor White or David Goldes. But most of us will just soldier on, without patron nor employer, making photos or art or music, just because we have to."

Sunday, 17 June 2012

Well, I had an especially pleasant Father's Day today, and I hope the rest of you dads did too. My son presented me with a gift and a card this morning when he got home from work—the gift was a big frame containing a number of matted snapshots of himself and me and various loved ones from years past—and then he treated me to breakfast at the local diner. Later in the day I indulged in pizza delivery (not common for me) and watched the final round of the U.S. Open on TV. A particularly nice Father's Day, mostly because of the great start to the day. This is our favorite, from about '97.

A special thought goes out from us today for dads who have lost children, B.J. in South Bend and Ed K. and any others. Today's your day too—especially so. The love you feel as a parent never leaves.

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Saturday, 16 June 2012

Today is "Bloomsday," a.k.a. Lá Bloom, the day in 1904 that Leopold Bloom made his epic peregrinations around Dublin in James Joyce's Ulysses. There are celebrations all over the English-speaking world. (Or should I say, the English-reading world. Or perhaps I should say the Irish-reading world!)

It's a special Bloomsday, too, in that the book finally goes out of copyright across the European Union, freeing celebrants from the widely hated Stephen Joyce, James's grandson, who, as The Atlantic says, "has gained a reputation as the most controlling literary executor in history."

In the rabidly pro-corporate U.S.A., where "our journey towards a corporate vision of perpetual knowledge assets exploited for profit seems unstoppable" (The Atlantic again), the status is somewhat murkier. Scholars and fans here may not have heard the last of the stingy Stephen yet.

But for the day, rejoyce! (As Craigy Fergs is wont to say, ya see what I did there.)

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Featured Comment by Richard Tugwell: "I noticed the provenance of the photo, which prompts me to blether on a bit. There is a large Joyce 'presence' in Zurich, where I live, and where Joyce died and is buried. He lived here on three occasions in his early, struggling years, and the areas and properties where he lived haven't altered very much. I frequent the same streets and cafes on a daily basis. It was on a short visit here to treat his eyesight—after success had come his way—that he contracted the illness which killed him. He has a rather nice resting place in Fluentern Cemetery on the Zuriberg, high above the city. Despite the iconic Irish-ness of his work, he has always appeared to me to be much more a European. Fluent in many European languages, and a self-exile from his country of birth.

"I see the photographer's address is just a few steps away from one of the (many) places Joyce lived during the war period. I'll go and have a look and see if there are any traces."

A few days ago was the 40th anniversary of one of the most famous photos of the Vietnam war, one which arguably changed the course of the war by affecting public opinion.

Toronto Star staff photographer Steve Russelldocumented the occasion. I really liked his portraits of Kim and her "Uncle Ut" together. I haven't reproduced one of the pictures here because I thought you might appreciate seeing all of them and browsing Steve's commentary for yourself.

I attended a wonderful get together a week ago in Toronto, the exact 40th anniversary of the Trang Bang bombing, and it was quite extraordinary in many ways. Yes, I was a photographer who happened to be there. When someone takes a great picture, others are often around making other images. That day I was one of those making other pictures but not the picture.

Minutes after Nick Ut took his famous photo, Chris Wain pours water over Kim's burns. The journalists took her to a hospital and insisted she be treated, although the hospital staff apparently didn't believe she could be saved. Photo by David Burnett/Contact Press Images.

But far more amazing was the gathering, for the first time in decades, of all the people who had some important impact on this little nine-year-old Vietnamese village girl's life.

Nick did take the kids to a Saigon hospital where Kim Phuc was, after many words, admitted. The staff had very little optimism that she would survive, so while she was treated, it was at a rather low level of medical technology. She was burned over her shoulders and neck, and apparently the staff just thought she wouldn't make it. Four days after the event, the London office of ITN told their correspondent Chris Wain (in poncho, pouring water on her wounds) to find out who this little girl was. As with so many events, she was still anonymous to the world. Chris and the BBC correspondent went to the hospital, found her, realized nothing good would happen there, and took it upon themselves to have her moved to the Barsky Unit, a private U.S. Med Center which specialized in burn therapy. There she started receiving the kind of treatment which allowed her to live.

She was in and out of hospitals for years.

About six years later, when she was still unable to move her neck because of scar tissue, she was found again by a photographer from Stern (the German weekly) who had photographed her before. He visited her at home back in Trang Bang, and realized she still needed serious treatment. He managed to get her a passport and have her flown to Germany, where she stayed for months, had much corrective surgery, and recovered her ability to turn her head fully.

Kim returned to Vietnam and stayed there until the late 1980s when she applied to University in Cuba. She went to school there, met a young Vietnamese guy, and got married. They spent their honeymoon in Moscow. (Describing it, she said, "can you imagine having a honeymoon in Moscow?") On the return trip to Havana the plane made a fuel stop in Gander, Newfoundland. On the spur of the moment they found a Customs officer and decided to defect. They managed to resettle in Canada, near Toronto.

Later, as she thrived—she has a family with two boys, now 14 and 18—she started a foundation, the Kim Foundation, dedicated to helping children who are victims of war.

All of which is background to last Friday's dinner.

Present for the first time in all those years were the following: Kim Phuc and her family; Nick Ut (whom she had seen regularly for all these years, and who she calls "Uncle Ut"); Chris Wain (the TV correspondent who got her moved to the burn hospital); Marjorie Arsenault (the nurse who cared for Kim at the Barsky Unit hospital in the mid-1970s, who is now 91 years old); and Murray Osmond (the Canadian Customs officer who ushered her and her husband into safety when they defected.) Everyone in the room at the same time...sharing an amazing history, all of which began with an accidental bombing—a frightening moment caught by a young photographer with his Leica, and shown around the world in the days of wire service transmitters which looked like cheap fax machines.

One picture can take on a very long life if the story is one that bears telling.

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Featured Comment by Paul Van: "What amazes me, is that every time I see a writeup about Nick Ut's photo, I learn something new. Joe McNally also had a blog post about it. And I seem to recall reading that Nick Ut was instrumental in having Kim transferred to a hospital where she could be properly treated. All in all, it is a photograph and story that continues to touch people long after the event. Thank you for posting this."

Featured Comment by Rob Graves: "Thanks. I had always assumed Kim had died, and every time I saw the photo, would think 'why didn't anybody do anything?' So, I was also pleased to read that Nick Ut had put the camera down after the photo and really helped (in an actual sense—not the ongoing influence of the photo). That Nick Ut was only 21 at the time seems to make the whole thing even more remarkable."

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Featured Comment by Dave: "Ahhh...Coney Island. I can smell the Coppertone.... I was born in raised in Coney Island, within spitting distance of the beach. In the 'seventies, although I had already moved to other parts of the city, I returned often to shoot on the beach and the boardwalk. From the look of his pictures, Bruce and I were probably out there around the same time. That place and that time defined the golden age of street photography for me. People were relaxed—they were enjoying themselves, and they weren't afraid to let their guard down. It was easy to connect with strangers—most of the time, stealth wasn't a part of the equation. There was an unspoken trust between subject and photographer that led to a deeper level of engagement between the two. I find that quality missing from most of the street photography I see today, and I consider it a loss. Thanks for posting the video, Mike!"

Friday, 15 June 2012

It seems to me that the biggest problem with street photography in the Flickr era is an absence of editing. Documentary photography has always had a much lower hit-rate than other genres, but these days most people just upload everything. "Engaging with the genre" can be hard when so much of what's on offer is chaff rather than wheat.

—Richard Alexander

When Richard's comment above came in, I was just beginning to write a short post about this very thing. I've always had a peculiar but distinct relationship to street photography myself, and it's this: I don't respond to a lot of it; it just seems dead, and leaves me cold; and yet, when I find one I like, I tend to really like it.

The hit rate can be low, but the hits can be very rewarding.

Being an editor by trade, I have this problem in that I edit things in my mind. In my head, I edit song lyrics, movies, books, all sorts of things, whether I'm imagining taking advantage of opportunities I think the artist(s) missed, or to get rid of something I think is an obvious artistic mistake. (Example: in the otherwise brilliant The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, I thought it was just a woeful misstep for him to make the villain at the end be the very same person he'd accidentally witnessed committing an act of rapine as a child. What is this, some 19th century English novel? Are we Jane Eyre stumbling into her own long-lost relatives on the stormy moor? That guy can out-write me in his sleep, but that was a beginner's mistake.) When I consider one of my longtime favorite street photographers, Juan Buhler, I have to admit that I don't even like the majority of his pictures. But then every five or ten pictures there will be one I just love. Like this one:

It's true that I often respond to light-in-darkness pictures, but in this case I love the tension between the central figure and that big bright spot tempting the eye to wander out to the very corner of the frame for no good reason. Those meaningless bright areas tempting the eye, those dark faces you want to see better. It's a deep shot, for me.

But here's the thing about street photography (and yes, Juan's photography is "street" even when it's inside a theater): you might not like this one. I could see that. You might like another one...one that I don't like.

That's the problem with Richard Alexander's complaint. Yes, it's true that a tightly edited set of pictures is going to be stronger (example: take a look at the twelve pictures on Jack Simon's bio page at Burn My Eye: tough to find a weak picture there, though I still have my favorites). But when a magazine editor once asked me to pick a portfolio of Juan Buhler's street photographs (he's got several thousand online), she ended up rejecting my choices and making up a completely different portfolio of her own. So even if we can both agree that Juan's site should be more tightly edited, what if your edit would remove all of my favorites and my edit would remove all of yours? It's true that editing is a major artistic control for a photographer—Walker Evans' American Photographs (to name just a seminal example among many other books) was a very tightly and deliberately edited construction—but it seems to be one of the problem with street photography that all of us respond to different things.

All other things being equal, I'd prefer to see more finished, tightly edited sets of work than the sprawl of the web generally encourages...as long as the photographer is a good editor and makes the choices with artistic purposes in mind. But then, as Ctein is fond of saying, all other things are almost never equal. I don't mind "editing in my mind" and segregating the wheat and chaff on my own (as long as there's not so much chaff that that the job is just too big). It's what I do. I'm used to it.

But it's always been this way for me in this genre. Ignoring the pictures that miss for me doesn't bother me. And hunting for those occasional extremely rewarding street shots that I love is just another mile I have to walk for the payoff the pictures give me. It's worth it to me. Your "mileage" might differ (as they say). And that's okay too.

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Featured Comment by Richard Alexander: "Wow—if I'd known I was going to be quoted in this fashion I might have thought about it a bit more. I feel honoured. Or chastised. Or something.... Anyway, Mike's relationship with street photography sounds a lot like my relationship with my own street photography. I've got lots of decent pictures in other genres, but despite taking hundreds of 'documentary' pictures I hardly have any—maybe a dozen—that I actually like. Somehow though, almost all of my favourite shots come from that small group."

Featured Comment by Juanbuhler: "I guess it's a matter of degrees. Yes my photoblog has lots of photos and it's underedited. But I am very far from 'uploading everything' as Richard's quote at the top says (of course I know he wasn't talking about me, but I clarify because you used my photo to illustrate this counterpoint). I started Water Molotov in 2005, mostly as an exercise. I wanted to have something to force me to shoot, and posting a photo a day is a good way to do that. Every now and then, I edit some shots into my 'main' galleries.

"Thanks for the nice words Mike. By the way, you seem to like a higher percentage of my photos than even I do! :-)"

Featured Comment by Steve Rosenblum: "I am of the opinion that there are few public artistic expressions that I encounter these days that would not benefit from better editing. Many movies I see seem 20–30 minutes too long—they run two hours or more, but would be better at 90 minutes. Many books, both fiction and non-fiction, seem poorly edited and way too long now. I thought that perhaps I was becoming an old impatient curmudgeon, but, I have asked my friends about this (many of whom have not yet reached my age or state of curmudgeonliness) and they agree. I am not sure why this is. It seems to be worse with film makers and authors who are already well established—it seems that perhaps no one is allowed to say 'no' to them anymore, they retain complete 'creative control' on the final cut or edit. I think that is to the detriment of their work. Having a judicious, but firm, editor is a wonderful thing. Most of us do have healthy egos and it is very hard to see our own creations with any degree of real objectivity.

"I have attended two of Peter Turnley's street photography workshops, in Paris and Havana. While most of the week is spent shooting, the rest of the workshop is almost entirely focused on learning how to edit by learning how to recognize what is or is not a visually/emotionally compelling image. Each day each participant is asked to edit their own shoot down to no more than 50 images. Then Peter quickly goes through each person's images saying 'Yes' or 'No' with a quick comment as to why he thinks it works or not. We all watched this process with everyone's images (including Peter's). After the review you could raise objections if you thought a strong image was excluded (or vice versa) and a discussion ensued. The final decision was yours. The goal was to edit a week's worth of intense street shooting down to 15 photographs. People shot many hundreds or even thousands of images during that week.

"I found that it did not take very long for me to start to see images in this way and my own work and editing process improved. One could argue that all of this is completely subjective and that we were only learning Peter's personal subjective process—and he certainly does have his own biases (shoot wide and in close, in particular). Despite this, most of the workshop participants work reflected quite different visions and ways of seeing the world. And they all improved. I think that street photography in particular, by its very nature, requires shooting a lot of images in a spontaneous manner—that is its essence. But it also requires disciplined editing if you want to show your work to others. One hopes that eventually, this type of editing will be incorporated in ones instinctive way of seeing when you are on the street and your images will become 'stronger' by whatever definition you value. My 2 cents. Your mileage may vary."

Mike replies:I think you could have said that with 20% fewer words. Just kidding.

I'm mystified as to why Instagram is worth a billion dollars (of money), but then I guess I don't understand why Facebook has a billion dollars to pay for it, either. Old guy syndrome. Kids these days! Newfangled coddleypoo! I need to learn how to go "humph."

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Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "A billion dollars only seems like a lot of money when you don't have 17 billion dollars.

"Software and web companies get bought for one of two reasons: 1) because it's the fastest way to acquire some technology and a bunch of engineers actively developing that technology and maybe some infrastructure; 2) because it's the fastest way to acquire a bunch of users who don't want to switch platforms (a.k.a. lock in), and simultaneously eliminate competition.

"Instagram is not worth a billion dollars for reason one. Some talented developers could clone it in a week, and Facebook has infrastructure up the wazoo, so I would have to say it's for reason two.

"I would say that the billion dollars valuation is because Facebook has a billion dollars it has nothing else to do with. Facebook rightly feared that Apple might buy Instagram and own a gateway to Facebook. Just because Apple is so busy trying to kill Google doesn't mean they don't have the time to eat Facebook's lunch too. I'm sure Instagram was playing Apple, Google, and Facebook against each other, and all three of them could come up with a billion on a moment's notice.

"Also, spending a billion on Instagram will probably (looks like it did already) bump Facebook's stock up a billion, effectively making it cost free to Facebook, or at least to Mark Zuckerberg who can pretty much do anything he wants with Facebook."